I've found that having wordpress installed on my hard drive makes things like building layouts, testing changes to my blog, testing plugins, etc so much quicker and easier (not to mention getting to avoid those awkward moments after the initial upload, when you realize you forgot a stray punctuation mark).
We'll be setting up wordpress on our hard drive using XAMPP. Once installed this will also allow you to test php layouts without having to upload them. I'm using Windows so that's what this tutorial will cover. It shouldn't be too different to repeat the process on other OSs (Robert set it up on Mac OSX by following this tutorial). This tutorial and the previous statement is based under the assumption that the user has a basic idea of installing applications in their operating system of choice.
- Download XAMPP
- Extract it to your hard drive's root directory
- Go to the xampplite folder
- Run setup_xampp.bat
- Run xampp-control.exe
- start Apache & MySQL
- Open your web browser and go to http://localhost
- Select your language
- Go to phpMyAdmin
- Create a new database with any name you want (I'll just be using wordpress) with utf8_unicode_ci collation (it's the very last option in the drop down menu)
- Download the latest version of Wordpress
- Extract to C:xampplite/htdocs and rename the extracted folder to your database's name
- Open wp-confg-sample.php in your text editor and change the following information
- Change putyourdbnamehere to the name of your database/folder
- Change usernamehere to root
- Completely delete yourpasswordhere, just leave the ''
- Save the file as wp-config.php
- In your browser go to http://localhost/YOURDBNAME/wp-admin/install.php
- Enter your blog's name and your email address and press the install button
- You'll be given your login name and password, write them down
- Now just login and you'll be in the wordpress dashboard. From here everything is just like your online wordpress setup.
That's it! Now just go have fun, and if you have any questions, I'm sure you know someone to ask who can help you. Just kidding, feel free to leave it in a comment. Pretty sure someone will get back to you.
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Nice tutorial. A buddy of mine just turned me onto xampp not too long ago. Good work!
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@Matt — Thanks so much! I was nervous since it was my first tutorial.
I had a bit of an issue installing getting this to work.
Everything worked, except I wasn’t able to publish any articles. I could write new posts, but I was unable to publish them. Additinally, I wasn’t be able to edit them after creating them either. After some searching on the web, I found this link:
http://www.apachefriends.org/f/viewtopic.php?t=29577&sid=8455d392b6a4c21a9d3e96141cbf914a
Apparently the integer count was rediculously high, and causing a problem.
This particular post solved my problem:
“Another work-around: before you install, edit wp-admin/include/schema.php and replace all instances of bigint(20) with int(11).”
I deleted the mySQL database I had previously built using the Wordpress install, and then edited the schema.php file. When I reinstalled wordpress with the new schema.php file, it worked perfectly.
Thanks for the tutorial. It helped.
Cheers!
@ Livi, sorry that it was acting up on you. We did three installs, two on windows, and one on a mac to test it out, and didn’t have any of the problems you listed above. So thanks for the heads-up and way to resolve the issue.
Glad it could help.
@Livi
You saved me so much headache with that tip, thank you! I’m new all this (modifying wordpress themes and anything server side), and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.
Oh, and much thanks for the original tutorial as well!
Now this some great info!!! Thanks a lot!
Thanks for the info.I will give it a try.
I was testing plugins and themes online and it was a slow process.
I never thought that I can install Wordpress on my Hard Drive.
Thanks.
It’s Nice. I am a newcomer to blog so it really helped me out.
Thanks… This is what I was looking for…
Thanks, finally i got this working local, great tutorial !
Now this some great info!!! Thanks a lot!
have u forgot something?
Extract to C:xampplite\htdocs and rename the extracted folder to your database’s name
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
verry nice gook
Now this some great info!!! Thanks a lot!
Nice tutorial. A buddy of mine just turned me onto xampp not too long ago. Good work!
Thanks for the help. now i can edit my blog offline and i love your themes!:)
<span class=“commentluv”>The Ska´s last blog ..Increase Your Blog Traffic</span>
You saved me so much headache with that tip, thank you! I’m new all this (modifying wordpress themes and anything server side), and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.
Wow. I didn’t even know it was possible to have Wordpress on your hard drive, but this will be very helpful. Especially, since when I try to tweak my CSS, I sometimes end up with errors on my page while I try to fix them. This isn’t good if Google happens to come by while this error is occurring!
Now I don’t have to worry about this problem.
Thanks.
Darvin @ Inexpensive Gifts for Men´s last blog ..Romantic Christmas Gifts for Men
Nice Tutorial, thanks. Now I can edit & modify it offline, try out different themes at my leisure.
Thank you very much
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Nice tutorial. A buddy of mine just turned me onto xampp not too long ago. Good work!
hahahahahahahaha
Thanks for this very simple and easy-to-follow tutorial! I was just what I needed in my quest to learn wordpress these next couple of weeks :)